2024

The Tower

This is a song that I wrote, recorded, mixed, and mastered. It’s based on the tarot card “The Tower.”

Acoustic Guitar - Adithya Sastry

Drums - Jeremy Edwards

2024

Harmonettes

A cover of Japanese Denim sung by the Harmonettes, a student acapella group.

Recorded by Lukas Nepomuceno, Julian Sarkissian, and Renata Schmult.

Edited and mixed by Julian Sarkissian.

This song was a challenge in vocal editing, tuning, and mixing. But luckily we recorded the vocals such that each one was relatively isolated:

A large challenge was making sure each vocal section (Alto 2, Alto 1, etc.) was able to be heard and distinctly picked apart from the other. I achieved this by letting each vocal section have a certain part of the frequency spectrum where it could speak through.

Another hurdle was tuning and editing all of the vocals so that they were cohesive but not robotic. It was a lesson in moderation and subtlety.

2024

Written by Annabella Paolucci

Recorded by Coltrane Gilman, Annabella Paolucci, Shantelle Subkhanberdina, Nick West

Mixed by Julian Sarkissian

This track was a big lesson in frequency masking and automation. The song needed to build up over time, but not become a blur of sound by the end. I used a lot of subtractive EQ. And to reign in the bass of certain instruments I used multi-band compression.

2024

Kick - B52

Snare - SM57

OH - C414

Room - TLM 193

API Preamps

A cover of Jack Johnson’s “Breakdown.”

I was a co-recording engineer for this project. What you hear is the pre-mix version, so this is just the edited raw recordings with no post-processing; the only processing comes from the gear we recorded with, which included a few compressors and EQ’s.

The goal was to reverse engineer the song. All of the microphone choices, placements, and effects were made with that goal in mind.

Tracking the guitar:

SM81 with tape around grills to eliminate proximity effect.

Ukulele was tracked with the same mic, but without the tape and placed over the shoulder downward into the body of the Uke.

Ran through Pendulum OCL-2

Kick through the dbx 160SL.

Snare through a Distressor (not pictured).